In preparation for next month’s walking tour of Chinatown, Dale Davis (Pickler#30) is organizing the first ever Dill Pickle reading group. Up first, we’ll be taking on Dr. Marie Rose Wong’s superb Sweet Cakes, Long Journey: The Chinatowns of Portland, Oregon (University of Washington, 2004).

From the publisher:

Around the turn of the twentieth century, and for decades thereafter, Oregon had the second largest Chinese population in the United States. In terms of geographical coverage, Portland’s two Chinatowns (one an urban area of brick commercial structures, one a vegetable-gardening community of shanty dwellings) were the largest in all of North America.

Marie Rose Wong chronicles the history of Portland’s Chinatowns from their early beginnings in the 1850s until the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in the 1940s, drawing on exhaustive primary material from the National Archives, including more than six thousand individual immigration files, census manuscripts, letters, and newspaper accounts. She examines both the enforcement of Exclusion Laws in the United States and the means by which Chinese immigrants gained illegal entry into the country.

This book is truly incredible: dense in its research yet highly accessible in its graphic layout, maps and illustrations. It is hands-down the only authoritative book on Portland’s Chinatown…or as one Amazon.com reviewer remarked, “This has got to be the most in-depth book on the creation of a Chinatown (or any neighborhood for that matter) in the United States.”

Book club will happen Tuesday, June 15, 5PM at the Waypost, 3120 N Williams Ave (at Fargo). The event is free and open to all. Look forward to related content to be posted soon.

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